ZitatBy Louis Markos|November 5th, 2019|Categories: Beowulf, Christianity, Great Books, Imagination, Louis Markos, Myth, Poetry
Beowulf was not a revolutionary but a guardian of all that is good and sacred, not a killer in love with blood and the cries of men but a protector of that which is right and proper.
Author’s Introduction: Imagine if Homer, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, and the other great poets of ancient Greece, Rome, and the Middle Ages had been given the gift, not only to peer into the twenty-first century, but to correspond with us who live in that most confusing and rudderless of centuries. Had it been in their power to do both of those things, what might they say to us? How would they advise us to live our lives? What wisdom from their experience and from their timeless poems might they choose to pass down to us?
Beowulf: on Heroism
All ages, yours no less than mine, need heroes. And, though the types and natures of those heroes tend to shift from culture to culture and generation to generation, there does exist a core of heroism that I would like to discuss with you in this letter....
...Beowulf was not a revolutionary but a guardian of all that is good and sacred, not a killer in love with blood and the cries of men but a protector of that which is right and proper.
I was attracted to him for the same reason I was attracted to Hercules and Theseus. Like those Greek heroes of old, my Beowulf was a beast slayer;...